Maybe something by Jane Jacobs? Or maybe Rework?
The Bible, cover to cover. I do book reviews on my blog and a friend of mine, tongue-in-cheek, said I should review it.
Finishing Americas great depression by rothbard (it’s awesome) and I have economics for real people and MES with PM in the mail.
Threat? I guess reading is usually threatening to those in power.
Actively reading:
Twenty Questions: An Introduction to Philosophy - G. Lee Bowie
Overcoat and Other Tales of Good and Evil - Nikolai Gogol
The Mosquito Coast - Paul Theroux
The Road to Serfdom - Hayek
Have stopped, but plan to resume:
Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in our Times - Dr. Carroll Quigley
The Roots of Obama’s Rage - Dinesh D’Souza
Elementary Number Theory - David M. Burton
Ethics - Spinoza
Madame Guyon’s Spiritual Letters
Hmm? He’s mocking those who say, “there’s no use in theorizing/trying to bring about an anarchic order, since there’s always been a state and it looks like there always will be a state.” Human beings have also always suffered from illness and probably always will suffer from illness, but that doesn’t invalidate measures to cure or prevent illness.
Currently The God Question By Andrew Pessin then after that , Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?- By Michael Sandel which I had to buy because flicking through I saw what appeared to be an attempted critique of libertarianism.
Recently finished Nick Turse’s The Complex
Jiddu Krishnamurti - Questioning Krishnamurti
Paul Johnson - Intellectuals
Gore Vidal - Burr
Cleopatra: A Biography - Duane W. Roller
Paul Johnson - Intellectuals
Any good?
Intellectuals is a great work of iconoclasm. Though it is somewhat blunt and judgmental, though these people deserve it. I don’t know much about Paul Johnson, but he seems to have a reputation as a conservative. And with the research that went into this book, it would surprise me if he was ‘conservative’ (ala idiots like Hannity) or ‘anti-intellectual’. Don’t let the title fool you, it is more in the definition of ‘intellectual’: doing one thing well, and then wanting to change the behavior of everyone else in addition to that. There is also a dose of hypocrisy inherant to all of them and loving ‘humanity’ while hating actual ‘humans’.
Road to Serfdom
Human Action, for the second time
Sirens of Titan
Human Action. Haven’t read much Rothbard, he’s good, but don’t be intimidated by HA’s length. The ideas can be complex but Mises is an excellent teacher. His prose is fluid, concise, and easily parsed.
And with the research that went into this book, it would surprise me if he was ‘conservative’ (ala idiots like Hannity) or ‘anti-intellectual’.
Kind of what I was afraid of. As much as the subject interests me there are far to many 3rd rate conservatives who are best to be avoided.
There is also a dose of hypocrisy inherant to all of them and loving ‘humanity’ while hating actual ‘humans’.
lol, indeed, there are many (most) times an “Ivan Karamazov” feel to most intellectuals. That may be the reason I tend to read the blatant misanthropic ones more, the ones who start off hating humanity from the get go.
-Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own
The heinous mistranslation of Stirner’s book’s title really annoys me.
The most accurate translation, going by his intent, would be “The Individual and Private Property”. The best, going literally, would be “The Individual and His Property”.
The Ego and His Own is a nonsense title…I seem to recall that Benjamin Tucker translated it years before the official American printing in 1907…I wonder if he committed the same error with it.
The heinous mistranslation of Stirner’s book’s title really annoys me.
I think the more “literal” translation is “The Unique One and His Property” (as how it is titled in France)
But in Tucker’s own words:
In particular, I am responsible for the admittedly erroneous rendering of the title. "The Ego and His Own " is not an exact English equivalent of “Der Einzige und Sein Eigentum.” But then, there is no exact English equivalent. Perhaps the nearest is “The Unique One and His Property.” But the unique one is not strictly the Einzige, for uniqueness connotes not only singleness but an admirable singleness, while Stirner’s Einzigkeit is admirable in his eyes only as such, it being no part of the purpose of his book to distinguish a particular Einzigkeit as more excellent than another. Moreover, “The Unique One and His Property " has no graces to compel our forgiveness of its slight inaccuracy. It is clumsy and unattractive. And the same objections may be urged with still greater force against all the other renderings that have been suggested, – “The Single One and His Property,” “The Only One and His Property,” “The Lone One and His Property,” “The Unit and His Property,” and, last and least and worst, “The Individual and His Prerogative.” " The Ego and His Own,” on the other hand, if not a precise rendering, is at least an excellent title in itself; excellent by its euphony, its monosyllabic incisiveness, and its telling – Einzigkeit. Another strong argument in its favor is the emphatic correspondence of the phrase “his own” with Mr. Byington’s renderings of the kindred words, Eigenheit and Eigner. Moreover, no reader will be led astray who bears in mind Stirner’s distinction: “I am not an ego along with other egos, but the sole ego; I am unique.” And, to help the reader to bear this in mind, the various renderings of the word Einzige that occur through the volume are often accompanied by foot-notes showing that, in the German, one and the same word does duty for all.
I don’t know German, but I am told it is a very expressive language and can be very difficult to translate at times. When poetry is called for in translation, it ought be done. I wouldn’t call it nonsense, but poetry assuming Tucker got the concept at least somewhat right. German raised poet and Stirner biographer John Henry Mackay, an intimate friend of Tucker’s never seemed to have a problem with how Tucker translated the title.
That said, on a practical note it does no good for me to write “The Unique One and His Property” as it is not the common name of a book title even if it is more correct. Likewise, The Trojan War hero Ajax would not be called Aias due to convenience of accepted language translations.
It is possible we (English speakers) may have lucked out with such an interesting translation.
when i’m not reading selgin’s theory of free banking.
Awesome. They really need to re-publish it with a new publisher, who preferrably sells it for less (i.e. Mises Institute?). I got lucky and found a used copy for $30.
Just finished Garrison’s book (which I will have to re-read in about two years), so I’m moving on to Israel Kirzner’s The Economic Point of View.
Will probably spend most of the rest of my bn.com gift certificate on the ebook of Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto.
Let me second my support of Gatto’s books. His two previous ones (titles escape me at the moment) are ingenious. I highly recommend them.
Finished Power and Market!
Just finished The Law, by Frederic Bastiat. Was a little slow getting started at first but he finished the essay very strong. I’ll probably read this one again sometime, only because I actually found it a little difficult to follow at times.
Next up; What Has Government Done to our Money! Murray Rothbard
I just finished Great Wars & Great Leaders by Raico, and Libertarianism Today by Huebert. Next possibilities are The Rise and Fall of Society by Chodorov, The Failure of the New Economics by Hazlitt, or Planning for Freedom by Mises. Any recommendations of these?